The Mirage

4

My grandfather’s house in Manyal was my birthplace, my playground, and my world. It consisted of two spacious stories, of which the upper one was where we lived, and a small courtyard. I don’t want to talk about the house. At the same time, I long to recapture the past, and what past is there but that it has a house around which its memories hover? My life is inseparable from that house, and will remain so for as long as I live. Of course, a house isn’t just a building. Rather, it’s a tower fixed in time to which the doves of memory repair for refuge, cooing with nostalgic longing for what’s passed of our lifetimes. So let me delve into the depths of the past for whatever waves of memories my head can receive. I close my eyes, disappearing from the world of things tangible, hoping to provide my spirit with the stillness it needs to take off into the eternal past. Let me confess that I long intensely for the past, and that of late this longing of mine has become a veritable ache. Perhaps this is nothing but a yearning for childhood. I realize what a serious thing such nostalgia and longing can be, since herein lies the secret of this regrettable malady of mine. Yet, although I’ve lived my life looking to this past, whether happily or otherwise, and despite my awareness of the powerful bond that draws me back to it, I still stand helpless before its impenetrable veils, and my memory retreats wearily from even its most critical and important eras.

I close my eyes full of anticipation and questions. Out of the darkness my eyes glimpse a faint light. I see my small hand as it reaches for the moon from atop my mother’s shoulder. What a memory! How often have we reached for moons that are no less unattainable? I recall the tremendous effort I once expended trying to take hold of my mother’s nipple, only to be thwarted by something with a bitter taste; tugging with delight on my grandfather’s crescent-shaped mustache; and shattering the flower pots, one of which landed on and nearly broke the Nubian gatekeeper’s arm when it plummeted off the edge of the balcony. Most days I would refuse to go to sleep until I’d climbed onto my mother’s shoulder and had her carry me the length and breadth of the house, and whenever she slowed her pace, I’d spur her on with my feet. I used to strut about constantly in girls’ dresses, my hair hanging down to my shoulders. One day my mother had the idea of making me a military uniform complete with stars and medals, so I put it on gleefully and proceeded to traverse the length of the house with a haughty, self-satisfied gait: the distinguished officer with a braid dangling down his back. My grandfather didn’t approve of such gratuitous pampering. However, he had no time to oversee my upbringing, since he generally didn’t get up till noon and wouldn’t return from the casino until nearly dawn. Besides, he feared upsetting my mother in view of the ill-fortune life had dealt her, and because she was all he had left in his old age. Thus the three of us lived: the father who had no one but his daughter, and the daughter who had no one but her son.

My mother would snatch at memories of my sister and brother with a tearful eye and a broken heart, and she yearned passionately to see them if only for an hour. And since, in her sorrow, she found no solace but me, she would set me in her lap and not want me to leave it. Indeed, she would have liked me to make it my entire world.

Life’s breezes blew gently. Thus, I didn’t realize until after it was too late that it was an unwholesome affection which had exceeded its proper limits, and that there’s a kind of affection that destroys. She had been cut to the quick in that place where her motherly instincts lay, and in me she found solace, comfort, and healing. She devoted her entire life to me. I would sleep in her lap and spend my day on her shoulder or elsewhere in her presence. Even during those brief times when she was busy with household affairs, I wouldn’t leave her, or rather, she wouldn’t allow me to leave her. In the kitchen I’d ride on her shoulder, resting my cheek on her head as I amused myself watching the cook light the fire, cut up the meat, and chop the onions. We would even take baths together. She would place me naked in a washtub, then sit before me nude as I sprinkled her with water. Then I’d take a handful of suds off her body and massage myself with it.

We rarely left the house, since relations with my father’s side of the family had been severed and my maternal aunt lived in Mansoura with her husband at that time. When my mother did go out, however infrequently, to visit one of the neighbor ladies, she would take me with her. The one place we visited regularly was the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab. This may well have been the only visit that we truly looked forward to. There was nothing she disliked so much as having some lady she knew say complimentary things about me, as people tend to do with children. She saw such praise as a bad omen and, with fear and trembling, would recite incantations over me to protect me from the evil eye. Yet strangely, I don’t remember such incantations and amulets with derision or contempt. Instead, I believe in them. In fact, I believe in everything my mother believed in. I acquired a certain degree of culture and finished secondary school. Even so, my faith remained intact. After all, how could my faith in God, His messengers, and His saints, or in the power of supplications, protective amulets, and shrines ever be shaken?

At the same time, I can’t say I took completely to our sheltered life. In fact, there were many times when I may have wearied of it and wished I had more freedom. Perhaps my impatience with the life we lived began to increase as I grew older. One sign of this was that my mother began keeping me constantly in her lap and frightening me with all manner of things in order to set me against the freedom and autonomy I’d begun to want. She so filled my ears with stories of goblins, ghosts, spirits, djinns, murderers, and thieves that I imagined myself living in a world filled with demons and terror. Everything in this world was something to be wary and fearful of.

That era is long gone now, but it still lives in my heart and flows in my blood. It was this that placed fear at the center of my soul, turning it into the hub around which my entire life revolved. In so doing, it destroyed my peace of mind and cast me into a state of unrelenting misery. I was nothing but a frightened spirit that, if it weren’t confined to a body, would flee in terror. I was afraid of people. I was afraid of animals and insects. I was afraid of the dark and the chimeras that stalked me there. I would have done anything to avoid being alone with a cat, and never in a million years would I have slept in a room by myself. Even so, fear ran deeper in my life than the things through which it manifested itself to me. Its long, thick shadow loomed over the past, the present, and the future, wakefulness and sleep, my way of life and its philosophy, sickness and health, love and hatred. It left nothing untouched. I lived most of my past life heedless and ignorant, not knowing the reason for my misery. Ordeals and afflictions later clarified certain aspects of my life to me, rending with their harshness the veils that had kept my distressing secrets concealed. Still, my sense of helplessness hasn’t left me. It’s a sense that rests, in truth, on my inadequate education and sophistication and a lack of confidence in my mental powers. My mother was the source of these torments. Yet, she was also my sole refuge from them, and I repaired to the shelter she offered without hesitation.

Among the memories I carry from that unforgettable era are the times when we — my mother and I — would stand beside my grandmother’s grave during certain seasons, crowning it with basil and reciting the Fatiha as we called down divine mercy upon her. We would talk often about the grave and those in the grave. How do they sleep? How are they received? What do they face by way of affliction and divine judgment? How do verses from the Holy Qur’an descend upon them as light that drives away their forlornness and gloom and alleviates their sense of isolation? Since it was my grandmother’s grave, I loved it intensely. When my mother wasn’t looking, I would rush over to one side of it and plunge my fingernails into its soil, then dig with a fury in the hope of catching a glimpse of the unknown that lay buried under the ground. It would distress me no end to hear her repeating, “To God do we belong, and to Him shall we return,” or, “To dust shall we return,” or, “Death is the final end of everything that lives.”

Once I asked her in astonishment, “Are we all going to die?”

Vexed by my question, she tried to distract me from it, but I refused to let it go.

“After a long life, God willing,” she said.

Eyeing her fearfully, I asked again, “And you, Mama?”

“Of course,” she replied, concealing a smile. “I’ll die some day.”

Pained by her words, I cried, “No! No! You’ll never die!”

She patted me affectionately on the head and said soothingly, “Pray for me to have a long life, and I’ll pray for the Most Merciful and Compassionate One to answer your prayer.”

So, holding my two little palms heavenward, I prayed to God from the depths of my heart, my eyes filled with tears.